


where it is always winter

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [11]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Character Study, Delirium, Dissociation, Fever, Flashbacks, Gen, Hallucinations, Heat Stroke, Hurt Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Second Person, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Sam Wilson, Protective Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27080905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: He needed to save himself from the snow, he tried to say again around the cotton in his mouth. The only way for him to attain salvation was by burning himself like fire, drenching himself in the sun’s mercy until it consumed him.Or heatstroke is a coping mechanism, apparently – anything to forget the winter. Sam and Steve don’t see it that way.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	where it is always winter

**Author's Note:**

> whumptober prompt day 14: heat exhaustion

“God, he’s burning up,” you hear someone say, and the way their voice wavers and breaks apart in the air reminds you of dimmer city lights, and not-quite skyscrapers, and the colour brown – old and murky and bittersweetly familiar. 

The heat sticks to your flesh like the embodiment of that deprived comfort, melting into your bones and devouring all that is frostbitten and icy within your veins, unfreezing the bone marrow and reviving life back into your undead, raw lungs. The sun is molten magma that beat down upon you flesh like euphoric rapture – salvation – from the numbing winter, because for as long as you could remember, the eternal damnation of hell was never a pyretic burn, but a freezing dead winter. 

“How long was he out there?” A new voice asks and it sounds more rational, more steady, more concrete than the last. Their conversation that flutters around your melting, evaporating senses vaguely grounds the rest of your soul to the Earth, disallowing you to soak in the infinite bliss that is the sun’s boundless paradise.

“He said he was going for a walk. I never thought he'd –” 

“Look, man, he'll be alright. Help me cool him down.” 

Your thick, monochrome clothing that had leached off the undeserving sun like something selfishly unworthy is suddenly being pulled from the reddening skin of your heat-soaked body. The fabric feels like grating sandpaper against your blistering, peeling flesh, but the urge inside of you is screaming that you need the warmth as you do oxygen. 

You needed to save yourself from the snow, you think, but your mouth has now erupted with the taste of bile and vomit, and the sun above the Brooklyn sky is a dripping, fading memory that drags itself from your deadened bones like fingernails that lost themselves to frostbite. You needed to save yourself from the snow, you try to say again around the dead organ in your mouth, and the only way for you to attain salvation was by burning yourself like fire, drenching yourself in the sun’s mercy until it consumed you.

Their voices start applying cool, solidifying material of wet clothes upon your arms, your chest, your face and the coldness is agonising. Where the heat is a constant reassurance of what is reality, the winter is not. The winter is unforgiving and loveless; it is the existence of purgatory; the desolation of the universe – because winter is snowflakes falling from the sky as you fall with them; it is frostbite seeping into your bones and fragmenting them apart like shattering glassy ice; it is sleeping for eternity amongst dead where everything is frozen and paralytic.

“No, no, no…” you want to say, but your mouth is choking down gallons of ice and frost, mouth laced with blackened, oozing frostbite that has replaced the smouldering security of the fiery sun, and suddenly talking is impossible.

You are a weapon and weapons don’t talk; weapons don’t lie in the sun for hours until their flesh is burning and raw and flaking off; weapons don’t defy.

They eat electricity, pull the trigger and go back to sleep where it is always winter.


End file.
